If you’ve got a sick banjo, Richie Dotson has a cure. The Newport News resident is one of the area’s top stringed instrument technicians, a masterful repairman who’s able to take an ailing banjo, ...

A wood-burning stove is simmering in Tom Cussen’s workshop as he works on a 1930s Gibson tenor banjo. “It was in rag order when it got here,” says Cussen, whose business, Clareen Banjos, has been ...

Stewart Universal Favorite Custom Banjo, ca. 1890. The neck is made from cherry, and the instrument’s shell is made from maple. The heel plate is ebony. The tuning pegs and head, ivory tailpiece and ...

in the United States between the 1730s and the 1830s turns up 58 different references to the banjo-and 57 of those citations describe the instrument as being played by black Americans. Ross, one of ...